Gramsci And Languages: Unification, Diversity, Hegemony: Historical Materialism, Volume 59

Description

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) is one of the most-translated Italian authors of all time. After WWII, his thought became influential and remained relevant for decades. Today it is generally agreed that his Marxism has highly original and personal features, as confirmed by the fact that his international influence has continued to grow since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gramsci and Language offers an explanation of this originality and traces the origins of certain features of Gramsci's political thought by looking at his interest in language.

Alessandro Carlucci (PhD) is Lector in Italian at the University of Oxford. He has published widely on Gramsci, and is the editor of New Approaches to Gramsci: Language, Philosophy and Politics, special issue of the Journal of Romance Studies (2012).

"With this book, Carlucci makes a significant contribution to the growing international scholarship and debates on Gramsci. The originality of Gramsci and Languages lies mainly in its ability to recast three fundamental aspects of Gramsci's political, intellectual and personal biography: the role of Sardinia, the influence of Italian and European historical linguistics on the development of Gramsci's thought, as well as his encounter with Bolshevism and Lenin's thought." Giuseppe Vacca, President of the Fondazione Istituto Gramsci. "Carlucci's study is a meticulous and at times brilliant exploration of Gramsci's relationship with the linguistic question a very enjoyable and informative read for anyone passionate about Gramscian matters, and about language in a social context more generally." Neelam Srivastava, Senior Lecturer in Postcolonial Literature at Newcastle University, H-Italy. "Gramsci and Languages is a very important addition to contemporary studies on Gramsci. It should be of interest also to philosophers (and philosophers of language in particular), and to scholars in social, cultural, and political studies." Piotr Stalmaszczyk, Professor of English and General Linguistics at the University of Lodz, Marx and Philosophy Review of Books. "This is a fascinating study of how Gramsci's interest in language shaped his politics and political theory. The reader will find important, newly discovered material on the influence of both Saussure and Soviet scholars of the 1920s. This book gives the clearest and most up to date account of Gramsci the philologist as well as the political activist, and adds to our knowledge of the Sardinian's life in the Soviet Union in the early 1920s." Carl Levy, Professor of Politics at Goldsmiths, University of London "So much partial or misdirected work has recently appeared in English that appropriates Gramsci for its putative authority that Alessandro Carlucci (in Gramsci and Languages: Unification, Diversity, Hegemony) has done yeoman work providing new background and readings of the still untranslated parts of The Prison Notebooks (Lawrence & Wishart [1971]) to show about Gramsci's lifelong interest in the interplay of culture, politics, and language." Stephen Shapiro, University of Warwick, The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, Oxford University Press, 2014. "With this book, Carlucci makes a significant contribution to the growing international scholarship and debates on Gramsci. The originality of Gramsci and Languages lies mainly in its ability to recast three fundamental aspects of Gramsci's political, intellectual and personal biography: the role of Sardinia, the influence of Italian and European historical linguistics on the development of Gramsci's thought, as well as his encounter with Bolshevism and Lenin's thought." -Giuseppe Vacca, President of the Fondazione Istituto Gramsci. "Carlucci's study is a meticulous and at times brilliant exploration of Gramsci's relationship with the linguistic question ... a very enjoyable and informative read for anyone passionate about Gramscian matters, and about language in a social context more generally." -Neelam Srivastava, Senior Lecturer in Postcolonial Literature at Newcastle University, H-Italy. "Gramsci and Languages is a very important addition to contemporary studies on Gramsci. It should be of interest also to philosophers (and philosophers of language in particular), and to scholars in social, cultural, and political studies." -Piotr Stalmaszczyk, Professor of English and General Linguistics at the University of Lodz, Marx and Philosophy Review of Books. "This is a fascinating study of how Gramsci's interest in language shaped his politics and political theory. The reader will find important, newly discovered material on the influence of both Saussure and Soviet scholars of the 1920s. This book gives the clearest and most up to date account of Gramsci the philologist as well as the political activist, and adds to our knowledge of the Sardinian's life in the Soviet Union in the early 1920s." -Carl Levy, Professor of Politics at Goldsmiths, University of London "So much partial or misdirected work has recently appeared in English that appropriates Gramsci for its putative authority that Alessandro Carlucci (in Gramsci and Languages: Unification, Diversity, Hegemony) has done yeoman work providing new background and readings of the still untranslated parts of The Prison Notebooks (Lawrence & Wishart [1971]) to show about Gramsci's lifelong interest in the interplay of culture, politics, and language." -Stephen Shapiro, University of Warwick, The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, Oxford University Press, 2014.